All Nines

Unexplained
But beyond these problems, the failure to intervene early in Syria (when "leading from behind" might well have worked) has handed important victories to both the terrorists and the Russia-Iran axis, and has seriously eroded the Obama administration's standing with important allies. Russia and Iran backed Bashar al-Assad; the president called for his overthrow—and failed to achieve it. To hardened realists in Middle Eastern capitals, this is conclusive proof that the American president is irredeemably weak. His failure to seize the opportunity for what the Russians and Iranians fear would have been an easy win in Syria cannot be explained by them in any other way.

This is dangerous. Just as Nikita Khrushchev concluded that President Kennedy was weak and incompetent after the Bay of Pigs failure and the botched Vienna summit, and then proceeded to test the American president from Cuba to Berlin, so President Vladimir Putin and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei now believe they are dealing with a dithering and indecisive American leader, and are calibrating their policies accordingly. Khrushchev was wrong about Kennedy, and President Obama's enemies are also underestimating him, but those underestimates can create dangerous crises before they are corrected. (Walter Russell Mead, WSJ, 8/23/2013)

Outstanding article in the Journal by a former Obama supporter that deserves to be read in its entirety. It provides details and analysis to support the claim - one that RedStateVT has made repeatedly - that Obama's foreign policy approach is disastrous and it is dangerous. A docile America does not make the world safer. It makes it more perilous.


Changes
But there have been other changes, particularly in black family life, that are not so clearly positive. The percentage of blacks who had never married rose to 49 percent in 2011, from 23 percent in 1963, a jump that far outstrips the rise in that category among whites. Black households headed by a woman jumped by nearly 12 percentage points at a time when similar households for whites rose just under 4 percentage points. (NYT, 8/23/2013)

The Times writes about the many positive changes in American society for blacks fifty years after Martin Luther King's march in Washington. And then we get this paragraph on the black family with absolutely no analysis as to why these things occur. The Times would have you believe that it is because of lingering racism or perhaps the legacy of slavery. Honest black leaders like Bill Cosby and Herman Cain will tell you that it is because of dysfunction in many black communities including glorification of thug culture and a declining influence of the black church.


Wizardly
“But,” he (Obama) added, “let’s assume that we eliminated all discrimination magically with a wand, and everybody had goodness in their heart, you’d still have a situation in which there are a lot of folks who are poor, and whose families have become dysfunctional, because of a long legacy of poverty, and live in neighborhoods that are run-down and schools that are underfunded and don’t have a strong property tax base.”

His solution, he continued, was to promote programs like an expansion of early childhood education and his latest effort to make college more affordable — including, he said, making law school two years instead of three. Such policies, he said, “help lift everybody,” and therefore “everybody will be better off.” (NYT, 8/23/2013)

And - providing a wonderful contrast with Cosby and Cain - we get President Clueless. His answer to black poverty is apparently to graduate lawyers in two years instead of three. You cannot make up the nonsense that comes out of his mouth.


Kiss Off
Coupled with BT’s debt of about $17 million to the city that was secretly loaned during the administration of former Mayor Bob Kiss, the utility’s fiscal challenges partly account for Burlington’s recent series of credit downgrades, according to Moody’s Investors Service, a New York based rating firm. (Burlington Free Press, 8/24/2013)

Oh, yeah. Whatever happened about the crimes committed involving Burlington Telecom during the Kiss administration? Progressive misconduct is buried in Vermont.

Bold Strokes

Tangled
While tangling with the leaders of two cold war antagonists of the United States is nothing new, the two bruising encounters in such a short span underscore a hard reality for Mr. Obama as he heads deeper into a second term that may come to be dominated by foreign policy: his main counterparts on the world stage are not his friends, and they make little attempt to cloak their disagreements in diplomatic niceties. Even his friends are not always so friendly. (NYT, 6/18/2013)

Well we are confused. President Obama's entire foreign policy approach has been predicated on getting the world to like us. But it seems that no one likes us. Time to try a different approach? Maybe - as RedStateVT has advocated - we should want other countries to respect us some and fear us more. 


Broken
Within hours of opening an office for peace talks in the Gulf emirate of Qatar, Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan launched a deadly ambush on an American convoy, and the Afghan government separately broke off talks on military cooperation with the United States. (NYT, 6/19/2013)

The Taliban was apparently miffed that their opening gambit in the peace talks was not well received. Their opening position being as follows: "All Americans must convert to Islam."


Line Up
The Boston School Committee is set to vote Wednesday night on a new health policy that would make condoms available in the district’s high schools, bringing this city in line with New York and Los Angeles. (NYT, 6/18/2013)

RedStateVT readers are asked to choose one of the following three responses to the above excerpt:

1) What Liberals mean when they say: "More money for education."

2) Why Johnny can't read.

3) Jesus wept.

This and More

Low Down
One of Mr. Obama’s ambitions on taking office was to forge a new, more positive American image in the Muslim world. But the drone strikes, along with the president’s failure to carry out his promise to close the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba, have helped drive the United States’ approval rating to new lows in many Muslim countries. In Pakistan, for instance, 19 percent of those surveyed by the Pew Research Center had a positive view of the United States in the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency. By last year, the approval rating had fallen to 12 percent. (NYT, 5/21/2013)

We could cite this as yet another failure of the Obama presidency, but that misses the real issues. First, a foreign policy should not be built around "getting other countries to like us." Second, Muslims in the Middle Eastern countries are never going to like us. 


Starstruck
Anthony D. Weiner, once a rising star of New York politics whose career cratered over revelations of his sexually explicit life online, announced an improbable bid on Wednesday for the job he has long coveted: mayor.
...
In the new campaign video, Mr. Weiner describes himself as a champion of the city’s middle class, and decries rising rents, inadequate schools, overregulated neighborhood businesses, and a paucity of “good jobs with benefits.”
...
Last year, though, Mr. Weiner moved from Forest Hills, Queens, to Gramercy Park in Manhattan, where he lives in a four-bedroom luxury apartment with Ms. Abedin and Jordan. (NYT, 5/22/2013)

How excited are you that Weiner is back? Us, too. It should be just a very short time before new pictures of Weiner's awesome pecs show up.

New Yorkers are understandably thrilled that Weiner is going to fight for the middle class....from his four bedroom luxury apartment.


Ghostly
Even the panel’s fiery chairman, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, after blasting Apple for creating “ghost companies” that diverted billions of tax dollars from American coffers and caused needy seniors to go without meals, had some kind words for Mr. Cook and his company.

“We love the iPhone and the iPad,” Mr. Levin said, going on to commend Mr. Cook and two other executives for voluntarily appearing before the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations. “I know it’s not easy to come in front of a spotlight but it’s important for us.” (NYT, 5/21/2013)

Next up before Levin, the Koch brothers, who can expect similar praise from the chairman. Just kidding!


Limits
The claim that the ongoing IRS scandal is limited to low level employees is falling apart. 
...
Former Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller… retires

Joseph Grant, Commissioner of Tax Exempt and Government Entities... retires.

Lois Lerner, Head of Exempt Organization…says she will invoke her 5th amendment right to not incriminate herself when called before Congress on Wednesday.

Holly Paz, Director of Exempt Organizations, subpoenaed to Washington to be interviewed by members of Congress.

All of this IRS leadership, in Washington D.C. 

Then one level down is Cindy Thomas, the highest ranking employee in Cincinnati in this Tax Exempt and Government Entities Department that no one in Congress is talking to... yet.  (Fox19.com, 5/21/2013)

The Washington Post's Richard Cohen wrote an entire column yesterday claiming that Republicans were picking on the IRS when it was really all about overworked low level employees (there's that phrase again) who he - using a fictional composite - named Mitzie. No word from Cohen today yet.